Global competitiveness 2006 – Mexico and China

11102006

The Global Competitiveness Report 2006 – 2007 (Link), released by the World Economic Forum on September 26, 2006 has some statistics and rankings of interest if your organization is expanding into new international markets.

Based upon a mix of economic factors, information and the opinions of international business leaders, the report lists how competitive nations are in relation to one another, and compares this to last years ranking.

Mexico has clicked up a notch from 59 in 2005 to 58 in 2006.

“Mexico’s ranking has remained broadly stable, moving up one place to 58. The country’s somewhat uneven performance over the various pillars of the GCI is shown by relatively high scores for health and primary education, goods’ market efficiency and selected components of technological readiness, e.g., FDI and technology transfer, no doubt reflecting the close links of the Mexican market to the US in the context of NAFTA. However, this is offset by the same institutional weaknesses as are prevalent in the rest of Latin America.”

China is the big surprise, dropping 6 points this year (48 in 2005, 54 in 2006).

“On the positive side, China’s buoyant growth rates coupled with low inflation, one of the highest savings rates in the world and manageable levels of public debt have boosted China’s ranking on the macroeconomy pillar of the GCI to 6th place – an excellent result. However, a number of structural weaknesses need to be addressed, including in the largely state-controlled banking sector. Levels of financial intermediation are low and the state has had to intervene from time to time to mitigate the adverse effects of a large, non-performing loan portfolio. China has low penetration rates for the latest technologies (mobile telephones, Internet, personal computers), and secondary and tertiary school enrollment rates are still low by international standards. By far the most worrisome development is a marked drop in the quality of the institutional environment, as witnessed by the steep fall in rankings from 60 to 80 in 2006, with poor results across all 15 institutional indicators, and spanning both public and private institutions.”